Who has more influence over lawmakers: the
people
or the world's largest and wealthiest corporations?
Impunity of Multinational Firms Must End with Overdue Global Treaty (Le Courrier, Switzerland)
"Unlike
the private-sector legislative framework painstakingly constructed thanks to
the Western labor movement, members of the new proletariat lack even the right
to confront their employers. From their European or North American
headquarters, multinational corporations aren't content simply exploiting the
competition between workers. They also take advantage of legal borders to skirt
their responsibilities. He who pays issues the orders? Perhaps, but those doing
the ordering now wash their hands of the acts committed in their name around
the planet. … We can't simply accept that companies which govern the lives of
hundreds of millions of people remain above the law."
A factory goes up in smoke, children are employed as
laborers, a unionist is murdered, a toxic spill poisons
workers, residents and the environment: Two centuries after the dawn of the industrial
revolution, the symptoms of uncontrolled liberalism are showing a savage permanence.
While in Europe, the offshoring of certain activities
and the successful social and environmental struggles of the 20th century have
created, for many, an illusion of affluence with few side effects, in most
countries the destruction of nature, exploitation, violence and danger remain at
the heart of how wealth is produced. Violations of essential rights are daily realities
for our factories, our plantations and the "off shore" workers in the
south of the planet.
Unlike the private-sector legislative framework painstakingly
constructed thanks to the Western labor movement, members of the new
proletariat lack even the right to confront their employers. From their
European or North American headquarters, multinational corporations aren't content
simply exploiting the competition between workers. They also take advantage of legal
borders to skirt their responsibilities. He who pays issues the orders? Perhaps,
but those doing the ordering now wash their hands of the acts committed in
their name around the planet.
For at least two decades the United Nations has discussed
this aberration, in which a few hundred private enterprises have dominated global
trade and have operated with few obstacles on a planet governed by 190 legislatures.
To prevent an ad hoc international convention, these corporations and their
countries of origin have made many promises. The first was self-regulation at
the 2005 Global
Compact organized by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Later, under
the pressure of a U.N. draft resolution put forward by nations of the South,
the West defended a middle way: the adoption at the U.N. Human
Rights Council (HRC) of common "Guiding
Principles" put forward to inspire national legislation a sense of a
shared responsibility among states, parent companies and their subsidiaries or affiliates.
That was in 2011.
As ever, after having rejected a global solution allegedly
for reasons of subsidiarity [governing authority should reside at the
lowest feasible level], the northern states are now reluctant to legislate at
the national level, citing risks to their competitiveness - a well-worn but
always effective hypocrisy.
Exposing and Confronting the 'Global Corporate Empire' (Carta Maior, Brazil)
With no illusions, Southern nations on the Human Rights Council
have put the issue back on the agenda and are working on a new draft for a binding
international convention. The popular [Swiss] federal initiative launched
yesterday in Bern by 60 NGOs is part of the same counter-attack. By forcing a
national debate on regulating multinational corporations, it puts added pressure
to the debate at the United Nations.
Of course, the battle will be a difficult one. The last election
showed that the Swiss population is more than amenable to arguments about the
"attractiveness" of the Swiss economy. But the NGOs aren't without assets.
Thus the outline sketched by France, where lawmakers anchored some of these
same principles into law at the end of March. The activists will also be able
to rely on a certain Swiss legal notion that stressed equality before the law.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
The slow pace of direct democracy could also be an advantage,
because this federal initiative will be observed with great interest from abroad.
If enough people sign on to this in Switzerland, a bastion of multinational
commerce, it could have a significant ripple effect on other countries hesitant
to take the first step.
It is certainly a faint hope, but it deserves to be pursued.
We can't simply accept that companies which govern the lives of hundreds of
millions of people remain above the law.
